Hi, there I am a new one for the MicroC/OS II system. Now I am working on the multiple Ethernet application based on the NicheStack and MicroC/OS II. Can anyone provide some reference design about how to manage multiple Ethernet ports? I do appreciate it.

I use two ports with tse and sgdma. I use one of them with tcp/ip (Nichestack) and the other with raw ethernet frames. I don't know if this is your case but I suppose it is even easier if you need to use both in the same way. I assume you have already built your sopc. Then all you need to do is: - call twice (or multiple times) alt_tse_system_add_sys() in the beginning of your application, to initialize all your devices - provide the required callback functions for assigning mac and ip addresses, get_board_mac_addr() and get_ip_addr() Then, the actual use of the ethernet interface, as I said above, depends on what you need them for. Cris

Hi, Cris: Thanks for your reply. I am trying to build a simple telnet application demo with two Ethernet ports first. Then I will develop a more complex system to realize multiple UDP/IP transmissions. What confused me is that at the sopc builder, I connected four DMA controllers (For one Ethernet port, it has one DMA for transmission and the other for receiving. Two Ethernet ports are needed, therefore I have four DMA controllers) at the same DDR memory module. It turns out the top level verilog file can not pass the synthesis. Here is the Error: Net"DE3_Referenceup_SOPC:DE3_Referenceup_SOPC_Instance|mem_dqs_to_and_from_the_altmemddr[2]", which fans out to "DE3_Referenceup_SOPC:DE3_Referenceup_SOPC_Instance|altmemddr:the_altmemddr|mem_dqs[2]", cannot be assigned more than one value So I am just wandering if it is necessary to allocate a separate DDR memory module for each pair of DMA controllers. The other problem is about socket programming. I have no experience about that before. Am I supposed to allocate one IP address and one port number for each Ethernet port? Each Ethernet port need to be managed by one individual socket?

You don't need a separate DDR: all dma share the same memory. My system is the same as yours: 2 tse, 4 dma a single dram; the only difference being I'm using sdram controller, not ddr. I can't tell you what that error is due to. Try check in sopc builder: - connections between dma and ddr - interrupts, arbitration,base addresses - ddr module configuration Then in Quartus, if you use top level schematic, check if any connection is missing or if a couple of them has been wrongly connected together. About socket programming. One ip address for each Ethernet port (you must define the get_ip_addr() function which will be called by interniche upon initialization) One socket for each tcp/udp connection you need. The tcp/ip stack will take care to move data to and from the correct physical Ethernet port.

The sopc builder problem has been solved. Unfortunately, I am still got stuck by the initialization steps of Ethernet MAC and IP address. I knew that I should use get_ip_addr and get_board_mac_addr twice to get the correct parameters for each Ethernet port. However, I can not find where these two functions have been used in the simple socket server example. Are they used by the alt_iniche_init()?

More precisely, I think I should ask are those two Ethernet interfaces should be initialized simultaneously during the calling of alt_iniche_init() and net_main(), or one Ethernet port can acquire the IP and MAC after the initialization.

Multiple Ethernet application under MicroC/OS-II

15 Replies

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
15 years ago
With my Quartus 9.0sp2 the file is here
C:\altera\90sp2\ip\altera\triple_speed_ethernet\lib\sopc_builder\altera_triple_speed_ethernet\UCOSII\src\iniche
and here:
C:\altera\90sp2\ip\altera\triple_speed_ethernet\lib\sopc_builder\altera_triple_speed_ethernet\HAL\src\iniche
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
15 years ago
Hello Cris and Red_alert,

I am also trying to achieve what you already have: to build a simple system with two Ethernet ports...

I build the system and program it on the Altera DE4 board. For the software, I use the Simple Socket Server template in Nios II (involving NicheStack and MicroC/OS II). When I check the alt_sys_init() function, ALTERA_AVALON_SGDMA_INIT is called four times (for the four SGDMAs) and TRIPLE_SPEED_ETHERNET_INIT twice (for two TSEs). It seems that the template automatically generates the calls to these function calls, using the SOPCINFO file.

When I run the code, I get the error -22. The problem occurs in the 2nd TRIPLE_SPEED_ETHERNET_INIT() call, where "the pointer to the alt_tse_system_info structure from the global array" "could not be found". The error is explained to be "ran out of other queue-able resource" in ipport.h sourcecode.

Do you know if this is a pure System problem? Does it mean that I need to increase the memory size in my system? Or, could it be a software error, since I did not make any changes to the template. As far as I understand, the template can initialize all the ethernet ports (up to 4 ports), without any change.

Thank you very much,
Kind regards,
Turhan

Altera_Forum

Honored Contributor

15 years ago

Sorry for the double post =(

Here is the error I see in the NIOS II Console:

InterNiche Portable TCP/IP, v3.1 
Copyright 1996-2008 by InterNiche Technologies. All rights reserved. 
prep_tse_mac 0
Your Ethernet MAC address is 00:07:ed:ff:ed:15
prepped 2 interfaces, initializing...
 Error opening TX SGDMA
init error -22 on net
mctest init called
IP address of  : 0.0.0.0
dtrap - needs breakpoint
dtrap - needs breakpoint
Error sending DHCP packet on iface 1.
ip_exit: calling func 0x509af00
netclose: closing iface Altera TSE MAC ethernet
ip_exit: calling func 0x50a2da4

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
12 years ago
Dear All,
I am also trying to make a Nios II Ethernet application with two Ethernet interface.
Please tell me what all components shall I include in Qsys and how to set the network parameters for two Ethernet interfaces.
I wish to assign network settings statically (I will be not using DHCP for setting network parameters).
Waiting for reply.............
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
12 years ago
I believe this old thread already explains most of the stuff. Please specify what you need or what you didn't understand.

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Multiple Ethernet application under MicroC/OS-II

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